Hey, whaddaya know, it’s Dec. 12, which means … something. I dunno what. I got nothin’ here.
Oh, yeah — this was the day back in 2000 that the Supremes pulled the plug on Al Gore’s campaign, which had been on life support for the better part of quite some time.
Well, as “Odd Bodkins” cartoonist Dan O’Neill was fond of saying, “Reality is a 5-4 decision in the Supreme Court.”
We now return you to the reality-based community, which is already in progress.
I had to skip out on the final 10km of today’s Tour stage, as Herself’s mom was in town and we were off to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to wallow in critterage.
But I can’t let the day go by without saying how cool this Graham Watson photo is.
As a longtime comic-book fan, I look at this and see echoes of Neal Adams’ treatment of The Batman, The Avengers, The X-Men and other caped crusaders. It makes the riders appear superhuman, yet still capable of suffering; a reminder, I suppose, that even when we suspect a rider of breaking the rules, he still has to race the race.
And the zoo? Extra cool. I haven’t been there in years, and while there were a few disappointments — the Amur tiger was in hiding, for example — the otters were a hoot. And the only thing that beats watching a grizzly dog-paddle around in a glass-walled pond on a hot day is watching a pair of lar gibbons — both of them missing left hands after injury and amputation — swinging around their cage as if nothing had ever gone awry.
And there were the meerkats, of course. They look like a bunch of little old men who survived the apocalypse and somehow crossbred with prairie dogs. This little dude looks like Charlton Heston minus the firearm and the Second Amendment attitude.
Seems it wasn’t Chinese pork that tripped up Alberto Contador after all. In what’s sure to give a boost to the Spanish beef industry, El Pendejo — disculpame, El Pistolero — says he tripped the Dope-O-Meter® after dining on a chunk of homegrown carne the team chef ordered up during the Tour ’cause the French hotel’s meat tasted like ass.
I don’t know how they ever caught that steer for butchering, full of clenbuterol as it must have been.
His story brings to mind an old Gilbert Shelton gag, first used in a “Wonder Wart-Hog” strip and then reprised in “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.” The initial version involved a motorcycle race; the encore featured a police chase.
Here’s my riff on the joke:
Two cowboys on roundup stagger back to the ranch with their chaps shredded, their hats in tatters and generally looking like they’d been et by a coyote and shit off a cliff.
“What the hell happened to you fellas?” asks the foreman.
“Aw,” replies one, “this cow we was a-chasin’ ran away from us so fast we thought our horses had stopped so we got off to see what was the matter.”
• Late update: Meanwhile, Contador’s homeboys Ezequiel Mosquera and David Garcia Da Peña are also deep in the mierda, but for hydroxyethyl starch. The fiesta never stops.
Muaah haaah haaaaaah … Herself has taken off for the Right Coast on business and I am left to indulge my basest impulses with neither let nor hindrance.
By sheer luck, a royalty check arrived as she departed, the fruit of my labors for VeloGear, a year’s worth of Fat Guy® jerseys, T-shirts, jockstraps, nipple rings and the like. I immediately cashed it, went straight to Bristol Brewing for a jug each of Edge City Pilsner and Compass IPA, and now I’m broke again. But at least I have beer.
It struck me today that most of my recent photos have been of cats, various foodstuffs and other items found ’round the house, and as a consequence you may think I never leave the place. Not true.
For example, instead of hewing strictly to my deadlines, today I broke out a mud-encrusted Steelman Eurocross and went for a short ride in the sunshine, up to around Mesa and 31st, where the bike path gives some spectacular views of the Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak.
Then I rolled back to the ranch and whipped out the cartoon marking my 20th anniversary of drawing same for VeloNews. And no, you can’t see it. Not unless you’re a subscriber, a buyer of newsstand copies, or patient.
Back in 1989, I was running out of rope at The New Mexican in Santa Fe and less interested in cartooning than in the VeloNews managing editor’s job. I applied for it, got an interview, and was turned down for my lack of magazine experience (12 years of newspapering as a reporter and editor was worth exactly jack shit).
But the Trio — the troika of owners, which then included Felix Magowan, John Wilcockson and David Walls — said they would have no objection to my banging out some editorial cartoons for the mag. That worked out pretty well for all of us, “us” not counting the advertisers, various functionaries at cycling’s governing bodies and anyone else with an impacted sense of humor. The Trio hired Tim Johnson as ME, and a fine job he did, too, before they airbrushed him out of the company portrait. And I got to poke fun at people for 20 years.
I wouldn’t have lasted 20 months in that ME’s job. Too much like work, don’t you know. And I’ve always been much better than Tim at pissing people off.
Late update: Speaking of work, as I reached one milestone an old friend and colleague reached another — fellow writer and copy editor Hal Walter learned today that two weeks hence his services will no longer be required at The Pueblo Chieftain. The job was beneath him, true — The Chieftain should be printed on soft, perforated rolls of tissue and hung in toilet stalls so that it may be put to the use for which it is best suited — but nevertheless it paid in American money, so Hal will be examining his options, as he has a wife, son and several dogs, cats and burros to support. You can keep up with his doings via his blog, Hardscrabble Times. Indeed they are.
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